Chuck Neal is a retired ecologist whose
nickname, “Wild Grizzly Stalker,” says it all: For more
than 25 years, Neal has followed grizzlies around the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem — 28,000 square miles in and around
Yellowstone National Park. Eschewing bear spray, bells and just
about everything else, he has seen more than 3,000 grizzlies, and
any reader with an adventurous bone in her body cannot help but
envy him.
Admittedly anti-social, Neal rejoices in the
wild creatures around him: “I believe in my inner being that
the best way to learn about an animal is to go naked, so to speak,
into his domain.” Neal begins Grizzlies in the Mist with some
scientific background: the bear’s home, its history, its life
cycle and food habits. It’s technical at times, and some
readers may be tempted to skip over the first third to get to the
grizzly encounters that follow.
Don’t. Scattered
throughout the science are some riveting observations and
biological facts. He writes about bears that smash ant hills, then
lick the victims off the bottoms of their feet. And he describes a
phenomenon called “delayed implantation” that allows
cubs of the same litter to have more than one father.
The
book is peculiar in some aspects. The small black-and-white photos
scattered throughout are unrelated to the text. Most striking
— but also charming — is Neal’s writing. It
hearkens back to another era, that of Emerson and Thoreau —
if Thoreau had stuck it out on Walden Pond for 30 years with
grizzlies in his mi(d)st.
Neal’s book is not all
anecdotes and science. He delivers a strong conservation message,
reminding us that space — not mere numbers — is
imperative for Old Ephraim’s long-term survival.
Grizzlies in the Mist
by Chuck
Neal
160 pages, Homstead Publishers, 2003.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Yellowstone’s grizzly stalker.
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